AB-test (definition)

What Is An AB-test?

An AB-test is also known as a split test: a critical and essential marketing activity. An AB-test compares the results from one media component with another and is commonly used within PPC advertising. Such tests can be performed for a large range of media components, including:

ad versions

ad propositions

buttons

landing pages

PPC campaign settings

email subject lines

etc.

Due to the many opportunities for measuring effectiveness, an AB-test is a widely used within PPC marketing. In addition, they are also often used within email marketing, usability and (offline) direct marketing.

Best practices for AB-testing

Best practices are:

Determine which KPI you want to use for your AB-test.

Write a AB-testing plan with the components and versions you want to test

Make sure that various AB-tests don’t interfere with each other (or keep this within acceptable limits).

Always test different ad versions within PPC campaigns, to determine which one is the most effective.

AB-test various landing pages, using tools as Visual Website Optimizer, Google’s Website Optimizer(note: this tool has been retired and replaced with a new function in Google Analytics), or Adobe SiteCatalyst’s Test & Target.

If your website receives sufficient traffic, or your AB-test has a high conversion rate, you can use multivariate testing in order to increase your AB-testing capacity.

AB testing tools

AB testing tools help to determine whether a test is valid. A test is valid if, based on the available data, one component outperforms the other. The outcome of such a test is usually measured in a percentage. Within marketing, a 95% threshold is commonly used to declare a winner. This means that one version has a change of at least 95% to provide better results than the other version(s).

SEObook provides a good (and free!) AB-testing tool. You can find it here.